Author Archives: Gavin Syme

15mm.co.uk gets a Blog

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I have just made live and announced that 15mm.co.uk now has its own blogger blog.  Out of the digital cold and into the hot light of cyber augmented reality the birth of the blog leads with a posting about the latest re-mastering and re-release of a classic Laserburn vehicle.  From white metal to resin and back to life.  Appropriate really for this new forum as well.

The blog is small just now but it will grow fast.  You can visit it on www.15mmcouk.blogspot.co.uk.  Its going to be a great read.  Plus you can see our new vision logo.

GBS

Children in Need 2013

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Today is the annual Children in Need event on television and I, along with the rest of the family have done my part.   I enjoy watching the televised event and I do not donate money by phone.  I donate money by hand held boxes, by boxes in shops and by way of Girvan Primary School’s events.  Today’s event was a ‘wear your pyjamas to school’ day which mercifully it stayed dry for.  After what has been a hectic week at work (see the Havelock ESO results over on the Ion Age blog) I finished up a bit early and picked the three offspring up at the school gate.

There are a lot of charities out there…a whole lot.  In fact I have got to the point where I ignore almost all of them as the feeling of guilt at not dropping coins into every hand that reached out was getting me down at a deep level.  This does not make me a bad person.  In fact I am a ruddy good person as all who know me will point out but my resources are limited.  So I choose which I support and Children get some priority in this as does the UK so Children in Need is near top of the list (after Sense).  It is a very worthwhile cause.

So have a look, have a read.  Have a watch if you can.  Give them some money too.  If you live in the UK and you walk home after work, sometimes the child you see in the street needs your help more than you might know.

GBS

Bloggy Endus Hiatus!

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Hello All!

I have been gone some time.  Well not gone rather sitting here as always working away but rather working solid in my ‘downtime’ on the playtesting of Patrol Angis as per the last post here some six weeks ago.  Six weeks, gone by a flash aside from the warm summer evenings now dark and stormy.

Just a quick post to say I will be getting back to normal now and to thank everyone in the test group for their efforts.  You can see the six weekly blog posts about it by me over on The Ion Age blog.  They make for some fine reading.  I will be redrafting the rules engine based on the results of the playtest over the festive period for release next year.

A lot has happened with me in the last month and a half so perhaps some retrospective posts will feature plus some movie reviews and books reviews too now that I have time to leisure once more. Perhaps even a wargame or two if I can drum up a foe.

GBS

Bloggy Hiatus – Patrol Angis playtesting

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You all know that I work hard.  Some of you might even know that twelve or thirteen hours a day is not that unusual.  A few know that I work weekends too and that sometimes I just can’t get it all done.  Well one of those times has arisen and I have decided to take a ‘Bloggy Hiatus’ on my personal blog.   This means I will not be posting here unless it is urgently awesome to do so.

Why?  Well I am now in the midst of several projects including the public playtesting of Patrol Angis.  Patrol Angis is the main 15mm skirmish system I am writing for The Ion Age.  Its taking up a lot of my time replying to the thousands of words of feedback and I am doing this at home in the evening, prime bloggy time.  There are other things too but that is the main one.

Head on over to the Ion Age Blog for the latest and I will see you all at the end of the month.  I intend to do Movember again this year so pictures and fun will come from that.

Happy Wargaming!

GBS

Wigtown Book Festival 2013

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Sally Magnusson, Horace and The Poet

Yesterday I attended the 2013 Wigton Book Festival and I had an excellent time.  The weather was warm and sunny and there were a great many events and readings taking place across the pleasant little town of Wigton.   This was not the first time I had been, in fact last year I attended and posted here about it.  This time my prime reason for attending was once more Sally Magnusson and her creation Horace the Haggis who was out and about promoting his new book for the kiddies.

My middle son, The Poet, was literally vibrating with excitement to get into the large tent where the reading was to take place and he enjoyed it greatly.  He even got his copy, being held up proudly above, signed by the authoress who remembered him from the previous year.   My eldest went to a talk being held by Robert Harris who while discussing his new book is also the author of Talisman a board game from the 1980’s by Games Workshop which was a firm favourite of mine.  If Mr Harris was distracted by being asked about it rather than his new work he seemed delighted to discuss the game!  The smallest of the wee chaps went to a talk on Dinosaurs where he put forth his theories on evolution and asked if birds would turn back into T-Rex’s any time soon.  A picnic lunch was spread and the drive home was very nice too with the choice of music being two albums by The Alan Parson’s Project.

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Books from the Book Festival

I trawled the book shops in the town and managed to find three gems among the literally thousands of volumes in each and every shop.  You can see these above.  There is also a flyer for the special exhibit for ‘Wigton 2113’ which sadly I could not get into as it was booked out…sci-fi denied!

Fantasy Wargaming edited by Bruce Galloway is an excellent find as books about wargaming, what I do for a living mainly, are thin on the ground.  No training manual for my profession no.   I have several of these titles about different periods and genres and they are all very useful.  This one pre-dates the whole modern fantasy wargaming movement but it does give solid grounding in what is to be expected.  I look forward to reading it.  The other two are a pulp science fiction art and story  book made for children in the 1980’s in a series which if you can believe I own the others but have never seen this one missing volume EVER before.  Awesome!  Lastly a heavy weight academic text on Three Tomorrows examining tropes in sci-fi from a British, American and Soviet perspective.  Yes, Soviet.  Its not new but it dates from the same period as Terminator and Blade Runner.

If you can get to Wigton for next year’s festival then do so as it is an excellent day out.

GBS

Ex-Patriots by Peter Clines – Book Review

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After I had finished reading Peter Clines first novel in the ‘Ex’ series I was so taken with it that I went out and bought the next TWO in the series (he is still writing the fourth tale set in this fictional universe).  I set to reading Ex-Patriots at the weekend and read it through in just two sittings of an hour or so each.  It moves at a crackling pace.  So just what is it about?

Two years since the dead rose and the plague of ex-humanity decimated mankind. For most of that time, the superhero called St. George, formerly known to the world as the Mighty Dragon, has protected the people of Los Angeles at their film studio-turned-fortress, The Mount. Together with his fellow heroes — Cerberus, Zzzap, and Stealth — he’s tried to give the survivors hope and something like a real life. But the swollen population of the Mount is becoming harder and harder to sustain, and the heroes are feeling the pressure. Hope arrives in the form of a United States Army battalion, based in a complex a few hundred miles away in Arizona. This is not just any base, however. The men and women of Project Krypton are super-soldiers, designed and created before the outbreak to be better, stronger, and faster than normal humans. They want the heroes and all the people of the Mount to rejoin America and have normal lives again. But can the military be trusted? And is there even a country left to rejoin? There is a secret at the heart of Project Krypton, and those behind it have an awesome power that will help them keep that secret hidden. The power of Freedom.

Was it any good?

Yes.  Climes is a pop culture rapid fire author and built on the first book with interwoven themes but also brand new branchings too.  I don’t want to give away the plot as it would spoil your enjoyment but let’s say that Zombies are not the focus this time rather the US Government and its post apocalypse way of dealing with the world.  If you thought that US Marines were the top soldiers in the world, well they are not something rather more enhanced is.  Twists and turns with double dealing is in the book and the last fifty pages took me by surprise.

Well worth reading and it was nice to see Nathan Fillion getting his dues in print.

GBS

Happy Birthday!

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Happy Birthday my darling wife.  Light of my life and inspirer of work and devotion unquestioned.  My adoration of you knows no bounds and your beauty is unsurpassed among all of nature’s creatures.  Is that enough….good, she put the cricket bat down.  🙂

Seriously though today is my good lady’s birthday and I have done my best to please her with gifts, food, attention, flowers and so on.  My last gift is this short display of public affection here on the blog.

Thanks also to everyone who visited today, who phoned, who sent cards and gifts.  Its nice to know friends are thinking of my good lady as she spends a lot of her time caring for children and doing favours for others.

GBS

180914 a Year to the Day to Go

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Daily Mirror Cartoon (Alex Salmond SNP, George Osbourne Conservative)

It is a year to the day until the referendum for independence is to be held here in Scotland.  With one simple question the voting age population of Scotland will make the single biggest choice likely in their lifetimes.

“Should Scotland be an independent country?”

Head on over to this BBC news page for the facts thus far about to whom and what else the vote will affect next year.  As I said in my previous posts here on the label 180914 there is a long way still to go and my own mind is not made up.  Perhaps its the cynicism over politicians and politics in general or the potential loss of Great Britain, a nation which did an awful lot to shape the modern world, or if the facts and figures prove Scotland would be better on its own.  Perhaps even it is just that I don’t really care I just want this national paralysis over and a choice made.

Either way I will certainly keep posting and as it nears I will do more in depth.  For now…well I am just too busy working to pay taxes to prop up whatever side wins the vote!  After all the economic figures from the YES and NO side are so radically different that one or both of them must be fibbing; they will either need the money or just send it back to me.

GBS

First Appearance in Print for The Poet

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During the week we took delivery of a special book from my children’s school.  This book, as you can see above, took entries from across the United Kingdom by children who like to write and put them into one volume.  My middle son, The Poet, is really keen to be a bit like his dear dad and to have a room full of books some of which he wrote himself.  He was one of a hundred in the book.  This is the first step as it were to becoming an author. Well done!

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To avoid being a cynic I will point out that I was well aware that the massive seventeen pound price tag for this little book was a money making exercise but to be honest I did not care this time.  Seeing my son so happy about getting his little tale in a book was well worth the money to me.  Encouraging children is a prime part of parenthood and beyond keeping them safe, well fed and properly educated it’s at the top of the list.

GBS

15mm Limited Edition Miniatures?

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The concept of limited edition miniatures is nothing new.  In fact Alternative Armies has had them for twenty years now in 28mm scale and other brands longer than this (remember those awesome 1980’s Citadel limited runs including Space Marine Santa’s and the like?) but they are seemingly always of the 25mm and 28mm scale of miniatures.  I have had a dig around and found literally nothing limited in 15mm scale.  Why is this?  Is it because there is no interest?  Is it because until recently 15mm did not have the same glamour as a scale as 28mm?  Is it a cost issue with money making not being possible with having a sculptor make a 15mm that sells at a relatively low price only for a few hundred castings or so?  Or is it simply something that no one has thought of yet as the wargaming hobby endlessly repeats itself with the same cookie cutter ideas?

Well in response to these self set questions I can offer some self decided evidence answers.  I think there is interest as many wargamers play 15mm scale, more now than ever before especially in the genres of Science Fiction and Fantasy and some of those wargamers will want limited’s as they do in the larger scale; stands to reason.  Certainly 15mm had nothing like the presence it has now only seven years ago when I founded 15mm.co.uk and brought Laserburn back to the wargames table so maybe its not come up before.   As for cost and money making this is different for every company but I think, having bashed the calculator keys, that as long as the run was of the five hundred or so mark it would be profitable so no get out clause there.  Has no one thought of it yet?  Well I admire companies like Critical Mass Games, Ground Zero Games and Khurasan Miniatures but they have no limited codes in their 15mm that I could see so perhaps like the rise in popularity of the scale it has not yet evolved as something companies do who produce that scale of miniatures will do.

This is something I have been thinking about for over two years.  In fact it was near the top of my brief while I was musing on what would become the new Ion Age.  Much like my idea to create the SHM Range on 15mm.co.uk which gave aspiring sculptors their chance to get something release when no one would take them seriously (which has been rather successful with more than seventy designs and a dozen designers to its ranks) I decided that I would give it a try.  After all without some fun and a sense of adventure what is the point of this hobby?   The Ion Age would be the perfect testing ground.

What would such a limited miniature probably be and how many would be produced?  Well I knew it would be produced in a run of 500 numbered packs that much was based on the hard numbers.  It would have to be TWO miniatures not one, to make the bulk up for packaging; that was a change over 28mm scale.  As for what it would depict I followed the same outline of rules that I have for Flintloque.  That being interesting characters but nothing unique or vital to a wargame system.  Purchase would be from interest and a sense of collecting NOT out of a resignation to needing the figures to play a certain mission or personality…that is cruel and something other much larger companies do.  So it would be a character officer to lead a lance or more of Retained Knights.  A perfect jumping off point to see if the concept had legs and would run!

IAFL01

IAFL01

The Ion Age will be releasing its first limited edition packs of 15mm characters towards the end of this month.  The pricing will be slightly more than the normal but not much and this is really only to cover the extra packaging and manpower this type of code needs as with all limited codes.  You can see IAFL01 above.  I will tell you no more about these two fine fellows just now though…you will just have to wait!

If you have any thoughts on this idea please do email me or comment against this post.

GBS